Southern Hemisphere

Observing Heaven from the Southern Hemisphere

I have only begun to seriously study astrology for the Southern Hemisphere in the last few months (Feb 2015) and it has radically changed my view of our globe.  The video below is my first attempt to help people visualize the difference between the sky seen from North and South of the equator.  And today (Jan 29, 2019) I add this link to a post showing How I alter charts for the Southern Hemisphere.

 

When I first began researching charts for the Southern Hemisphere I was shocked at the lack of information.  As I was poking around looking for more information, I came across a thread in a forum about why there is so little info about the topic.  Someone mentioned the statistic that only 10% of the world’s population lives in the Southern Hemisphere.  Then of course there was the obvious observation, which I had never observed until it was pointed out, that most of the Earth’s dry land is in the Northern Hemisphere.

I was reminded of Plato’s discussion about up and down (Timeaus*) and how the terms really make no sense and a careful communicator would not use them.  This is not an exact quote so you might want to read it for yourself, but it looks to me like he said if someone walked all the way around the globe, I’m assuming he meant crossing both poles, the point they started out on would look like down when they got to the side opposite from where they began. 

It took a lot of concentration for me to picture in my mind how this would work.  Stellarium was a big help, and so was PlanetsToday.com.  So far I have only made a video using Stellarium.

Right now I am not comfortable with the way astrology charts for the Southern Hemisphere are drawn by the free chart generating sites, so I will be using my own hand drawn charts.  They use the same data, but reflect the seasons as experienced in the Southern Hemisphere and the daily rising of the Sun on the right instead of left as the observer faces North to view the MC.

Considering the view of heaven from the Southern Hemisphere is an important step in getting acquainted with our whole globe.  A person located 12 time zones away (longitude) will see the same part of the zodiac I see 12 hours after I do, with minor changes, compared to someone in Valdivia, Chile who must wait 6 months to see the same section of the zodiac I see in the Northern Hemisphere.  And from extreme Northern Latitudes, anything along the zodiac belt from the end of Scorpio to the beginning of Aquarius will never be visible.

It will take some time to integrate this deeper view of our globe into my astrological thinking.  I hope people will add what they have learned about this through comments or email, and return to see how the understanding of North and South evolves on this blog.

* Below I have copied the related English translation from the link.  At the link they have Benjamin Jowett's English translation of Timeaus side by side with the Greek.

The nature of the light and the heavy will be best understood when examined in connexion with our notions of above and below; for it is quite a mistake to suppose that the universe is parted into two regions, separate from and opposite to each other, the one a lower to which all things tend which have any bulk, and an upper to which things only ascend against their will. For as the universe is in the form of a sphere, all the extremities, being equidistant from the centre, are equally extremities, and the centre, which is equidistant from them, is equally to be regarded as the opposite of them all. Such being the nature of the world, when a person says that any of these points is above or below, may he not be justly charged with using an improper expression? For the centre of the world cannot be rightly called either above or below, but is the centre and nothing else; and the circumference is not the centre, and has in no one part of itself a different relation to the centre from what it has in any of the opposite parts. Indeed, when it is in every direction similar, how can one rightly give to it names which imply opposition? For if there were any solid body in equipoise at the centre of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they are all perfectly similar; and if a person were to go round the world in a circle, he would often, when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of the same point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one part above and another below is not like a sensible man.